Interactive displays seek to educate the public about high-tech biology.

Corie Lok

If you’ve walked into the Broad Institute’s new building in Kendall Square lately (or even just peered in through the giant front windows), you may have noticed a set of 42-inch flat-panel LCD screens, arranged in a four-by-four grid, sitting in the expansive main floor lobby. Or if you came by earlier this year, you probably saw a tall, curved wooden structure.

They are the beginnings of a museum exhibit being developed by the Broad and scheduled to open this fall. The first part of the exhibit will consist of 60 more LCD screens in addition to the first 16 that will be put together to form a curved wall in the shape of a swirl, covering a total of about 1,000 square feet.

On the screens will be short snippets of the latest biomedical research news stories from the Broad and elsewhere, along with other educational material to support each story. Visitors will be able to control which stories they read further and how much additional material they see by using a handheld remote control device.

These remote controls will also be mounted to the outside of the building in a protective casing and some of the screens will face outside, so that passersby can stop and take in the exhibit.

“This is about bringing the world of science to the public,” says Laurie Goodman, the director of the Broad Institute Museum.

There are also plans for other exhibits, such as one with operational, high-throughput equipment such as DNA sequencers and gene chip readers, along with videos of Broad researchers talking about their work. The exhibits are expected to cost more than $2 million, with money coming from the institute’s discretionary funds and external grants.

Goodman says the idea for the museum was part of the original plans for the Broad Institute’s new Main Street building, which officially opened late last month.